{"id":2281,"date":"2019-04-29T12:19:58","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T12:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/?p=2281"},"modified":"2019-04-29T12:20:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T12:20:00","slug":"a-place-at-the-table-women-and-board-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/29\/a-place-at-the-table-women-and-board-games\/","title":{"rendered":"A Place at the Table: Women and Board Games"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hello hello! I\u2019m trusting that all of you gamers have had a\ngood week. I certainly have. I\u2019m not sure if y\u2019all have noticed, but currently,\nI\u2019m currently the only female voice on this website. So, ladies, this one is\nfor you. Guys, you can read along as well. It never hurts to read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ladies, I\u2019m going to be honest with you. We are\nunderrepresented in the board game community. The community is changing, but we\nare still behind the guys when it comes to active players. I don\u2019t know if\nwomen just aren\u2019t as vocal within the community, or they don\u2019t feel welcome in\nboard game communities, or if it is some other reason that we aren\u2019t seeing the\nrepresentation. I don\u2019t want to say that we aren\u2019t out there and well known\nbecause there are some well-known women board gamers. I consider myself fairly\nlucky as far as playing board games goes. I\u2019m not the only woman in our local\nboard game community. In fact, all the winners of our Ticket to Ride Tournament\nhave been women. 4 years, and 4 female winners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be honest, I haven\u2019t encountered a lot of the problems\nthat women have expressed about playing board games. I\u2019ve been very very lucky.\nOur local group has a fairly large number of female players, so I\u2019ve never felt\nlike I needed to be brand ambassador, so to speak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That being said, when I venture beyond the safe confines of\nthe Traverse City Board Gamers, I have run into some difficulties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"536\" src=\"http:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_20180910_153351_118-1024x536.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2018\" srcset=\"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_20180910_153351_118-1024x536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_20180910_153351_118-300x157.jpg 300w, https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_20180910_153351_118-768x402.jpg 768w, https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_20180910_153351_118.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I purchase most of my board games online. There are a few\nreasons for this. The selection online is wider than what I can find at the\nsmall board game shops in our town. I would prefer to support small local\nbusiness, and we do buy games from them. But\u2026 I don\u2019t generally go into them\nwithout Number One by my side. I find that when I go into our local shops by\nmyself, I become some sort of novelty. Every single person in the store stops\nwhat they are doing and looks at me like I\u2019ve wandered in by accident.\nGenerally, I have my Peep and Stormageddon with me, so that certainly doesn\u2019t\nhelp matters much. Here\u2019s the thing, when I\u2019m looking to purchase a game, I\u2019ve\ngenerally done my research. So, I know what game I\u2019m looking for, and I know if\nthere are any expansions or anything special that I need to buy with it. Should\nI ask a question while I\u2019m in the store (usually something related to the\nlocation of the game so that I can purchase it), I often find that the words\n\u201clittle lady\u201d or \u201csweetheart\u201d are attached to the response. By shopping online,\nI can also generally find the games cheaper than what our local businesses\ncharge for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other thing that I\u2019ve noticed when playing a board game is that sometimes I get talked over. Meaning that even if I\u2019m answering a question or clarifying a rule for someone, another player is going to talk over me to make sure they are heard even if their information is incorrect. Luckily, this doesn\u2019t happen often, and when it does, the other people playing the game are often quick to state that Kate knows the rules for this game or Kate does in fact know what she is talking about. I don\u2019t think that I\u2019ve ever had any of the regular attendees of our game night ever question me or try to talk over me. It\u2019s only ever been someone who comes to check it out once and then never comes back again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think one of the solutions to the problems that women have\nin the board game community is speaking up. If you know the rules and you are\nteaching a game, let them know that you know the rules and you know what you\nare doing. Don\u2019t let the guys talk over you because you are a woman. We also\nneed to be more present in the community. Go to conventions. Go to tournaments and\nlocal board game events. And when you are there, ladies, win some games and\nkick some butt! I know you can do it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello hello! I\u2019m trusting that all of you gamers have had a good week. I certainly have. I\u2019m not sure if y\u2019all have noticed, but currently, I\u2019m currently&#8230; <a class=\"list-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/29\/a-place-at-the-table-women-and-board-games\/\">Continue reading <i class=\"fa fa-angle-double-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[272,277],"tags":[257,280,302,303],"class_list":["post-2281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-place-at-the-table","category-blogs","tag-a-place-at-the-table","tag-blog","tag-women","tag-women-and-board-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2281"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2295,"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281\/revisions\/2295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traversecityboardgamers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}